Antony Donaldson

Art Brokerage: Antony Donaldson British Artist: b. 1939. Although Donaldson was not part of the generation of Royal College of Art students, his early friendship with Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips linked him directly to the group of RCA students who established Pop Art as a movement at the 1961 Young Contemporaries Exhibition in London. In 1962, Donaldson developed the simplified treatment of the female figure that typified his work over the next half decade. Youthful, shapely and sexually confident, these women strike flirtatious poses and reveal themselves almost wantonly to the viewer's gaze. Even when clothed in their bathing suits, or when showing us nothing more than their faces, it is the exposed surface of their perfect flesh that one first notices. Their facial features are depicted in a generalized way, to emphasize the fact that these are not portraits of particular individuals but fantasy images formed in the mind of a young man. These depictions of beach beauties, strippers and starlets bask in the prospect of pleasure, of an existence characterized by never-ending relaxation and leisure, and as such they perfectly capture the mood of the time - the demands for the good life after the grayness and deprivations of the immediate post-war years. Like Hockney, Donaldson dreamt of a sun-drenched, laid-back southern California life and settled in Los Angeles 1966-1968. The bold simplicity of his compositional schemes and the central role accorded to flat areas of saturated color were confirmed by his American experience. Donaldson's work has been included in all international, overview exhibitions on Pop Art and in all publications on the movement. Listings wanted.